April 3, Tomsk Region Governor met with the Ambassador of France to Russia and representatives of large French companies
April 3, Tomsk Region Governor met with the Ambassador of France to Russia and representatives of large French companies.
At the meeting with the head of Tomsk Region Sergey Zhvachkin Jean de Gliniasty repeatedly stressed that Tomsk had become a peculiar symbol for the French business.
"Tomsk today is a showcase of a properly functioning public-private partnership model for concession agreements," he said at the meeting.
Last year two large French companies, Veolia and ERDF, established themselves in two important spheres of life of the region – management of the city's water and utilities networks and electric power distribution grids. The region has high hopes for a better quality of services in those complicated spheres.
Sergey Zhvachkin noted that the meeting with the representatives of the French companies reminded him of his daily operational meetings with his team "because we discussed the same pressing issues in the areas such as transport, road construction, energy efficiency, and medicine. That means that the Ambassador is well acquainted with our region."
Also, the representatives of the French companies met with the leaders of Tomsk business – large industrial enterprises and small and medium innovative firms, including the residents of the Tomsk SEZ. One of the results of the visit of the French delegation to Tomsk was a framework agreement on cooperation between Schneider Electric and Tomsk Polytechnic University.
The representatives of the Russian-French Center for Energy Efficiency intend to send to Tomsk a delegation of companies specializing in specific fields to work on a project involving reconstruction of a social facility (a school or a kindergarten) in Tomsk using the best available French technologies. They were also interested in building a "smart" ecohouse in Tomsk.
A House of France in Tomsk was many times mentioned at the meetings. The project will bring together the Embassy of France to Russia, ERDF, Veolia, Schneider Electric, and RFCEE. The Embassy and the French companies see the House a cultural and educational center which at the same time promotes scientific research accomplishments and relations of Tomsk and France. The project will be completed within 4 months.
